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Judge Recommends ISP and Search Engine Blocking of Sci-Hub in the US (torrentfreak.com)
Sci-Hub, which is regularly referred to as the "Pirate Bay of Science," faces one of the strongest anti-piracy injunctions we have seen in the US to date, reports TorrentFreak. From the article: Earlier this year the American Chemical Society (ACS), a leading source of academic publications in the field of chemistry, filed a lawsuit against Sci-Hub and its operator Alexandra Elbakyan. Sci-Hub was made aware of the legal proceedings but did not appear in court. As a result, a default was entered against the site. In addition to millions of dollars in damages, ACS also requested third-party Internet intermediaries to take action against the site. While the request is rather unprecedented for the US, as it includes search engine and ISP blocking, Magistrate Judge John Anderson has included these measures in his recommendations. Judge Anderson agrees that Sci-Hub is guilty of copyright and trademark infringement. In addition to $4,800,000 in statutory damages, he recommends a broad injunction that would require search engines, ISPs, domain registrars and other services to block Sci-Hub's domain names. If the U.S. District Court Judge adopts this recommendation, it would mean that Internet providers such as Comcast could be ordered to block users from accessing Sci-Hub.
But publicly funded research should be available to the public.
This would mean the blocking access to publicly funded science. This is a first ammendment violation. (this part of the ruling would be.)
Usually what happens in just about every court proceeding is that the plaintiff's attorney files a motion usually leading to a hearing unless the parties settle the matter beforehand. During the court proceedings the plaintiff presents to the judge an order that they believe will resolve the issue. If the defendant doesn't show up (which is the case here) to contest the order that has been presented by the plaintiff, unless the judge really understands the order (which I suspect they may not understand the internet in this case), they may be inclined to use the plaintiff's proposed order and enter it as a default judgment. Otherwise, I'm not sure how a judge could have thought that this is an appropriate remedy to the issue. The judge is asking entities who are not parties to the case to perform actions that constitute the remedy.
We'll make great pets
Isn't it only evil totalitarians that block their entire countries from accessing internet sites they don't like?
Well since the US is just following precedent from other countries why stop at the EU/UK? Lets bring back the death penalty for homosexuals just like Saudi Arabia. It is just standard precedent.... Of another country.
never heard of proxies and VPN's before. Hollywood has about zero luck stopping copyright violations the past 25 years, and these idiots will have the same level of luck.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I mean, after all, what else is the job of a search engine, a social network, or an ISP but to ensure that information is well regulated, vetted, controlled, licensed, checked, filtered, screened, sliced, diced, and pureed?
Check your premises.
... and so the censorship begins...
The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers...
If you don't like the result, you'll need a different argument, because while the Constitution only authorizes the federal government to do about a dozen pecific things, protecting copyright is one of those twelve things:
Article 1 - Section 8, powers of the federal government (clause 8):
âoeTo promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.â
You might advocate for a statute saying that any papers which in any way relate to any research which benefitted from any taxpayer funding must be placed in the public domain. The practical effect of that would be debatable and hard to predict, but it would be a cogent proposal. Pretending that the Constitution says the opposite of what it says in Section 8 is not a reasonable argument.
Public-funding of science means the scientific output is public property. Outfits like Nature have been raking it in charging people outrageous subscriptions to access data that in vast majority of cases is connected/paid/dependent on public monies. That racket cannot last forever.
And when it comes to copyright, when does it stop with science? Is a classic like On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox royalty-free given it was published in 1964? Does Alain Aspect owe the Bell estate royalties? This is all so much horseshit.
ArrrrrrrrrrrVPN.com
Requiem for the American Dream
Aaron Swartz did not die just to have this still happen.
You know what i've never seen anyone say, but that's sad/true? As someone who has access to journals legally, it's actually -easier- to find the articles i'm looking for through scihub a lot of the time.. how sad is that?
With the loss of net neutrality we are looking at a whitelist only to select from, provided you have paid the additional fees to even access approved sites. Didn't pay the $17.50/month for news aggregate sites? Well then no slashdot for you. Goodbye small business and other small sites, hello renting a template you just fill out and await approval before being charged a crap ton to be whitelisted. Don't like this model? Tough because not only will your opposing views be denied any public online forum, it will be illegal to compete against the monopoly in your area.
The US just voted against a UN ban on just that, i.e. it is the official position of the US that it is cool with killing people for being gay.
http://www.newnownext.com/u-s-...
snake
I'm thinking along the lines of a DHT. Then you should be able to cobble up a DNS server that goes to the alternate system if lookup in DNS fails. Slightly easier than editing /etc/hosts.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
For an injunction to apply to a non-party (i.e., someone who did not get their proverbial day in court), that non-party has to be in "active concert or participation" with the defendant. There's a fairly accessible overview of the issue here.
Given the unlikelihood that ISPs and search engines are actively colluding with SciHub (or indeed treating them any differently than any other site out there), it would greatly surprise me if a court would find them to satisfy the above standard and hold them in contempt for not complying with the injunction.
Now, might they simply decide to comply with the injunction anyway to avoid the hassle of having to go to court to prove they shouldn't be subject to it? Absolutely. But that's more of a business decision than a legal one.
How dare the plebs attempt to actually LEARN something.
This should be spun as a tragedy.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
So that judge thinks it's OK for publishers to claim copyright on public property that they didn't pay for?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
And won't happen.
Always can go to Sci-Hub's Wikipedia page and check the latest links to the site or the TOR address.
Maybe the US should go all EU on it and make it a crime to view any science related website :|
Luckily, these are scientists, they know how easy it is to circumvent those laughable measures.
> I won't object if you do that with my papers.
You can allow people do to whatever with your papers. There are several Creative Commons licenses you might use, or the GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL).
That applies to YOUR papers. If your employer paid you to sit in their office and use their computer to write something for their use about their research, it may be their paper. Your right would be getting the pay check.
> Am I free to get a copy of these papers, and make a recording of them, and put that recording on YouTube?
Generally no, unless the license / author / copyright holder allows it. If you want to take someone's work and monetize it with YouTube ads, you'll have to talk to them about if they want to get a cut. An audio copy is a copy, and authors control who is allowed to publish copies unless it's fair use.
Fair use can get complex, but basically the idea is that if the new copy competes commercially with the author's authorized copies, it's probably not fair use. Again, if you want to take someone's work and monetize it with YouTube ads, you'll have to talk to them about if they want to get a cut.
You can do certain things that are considered fair, such as quoting a few sentences from someone else's book, in your own book or long-term video. You'd be selling YOUR book, which has it's own value, rather reselling their work without permission. The fact that your work quotes a few lines of theirs wouldn't be the main value offered.
One thing you are allowed to do is particularly relevant to research. You can write an article or make a video about the research and its results. You cannot just read the other person's paper out loud. If you're reading their words out loud it's still there words and they have copyright.
They do not have copyright on the facts. Facts are not protected by copyright. So you can read the research paper, then put it aside and then make a video telling us about what you read.
Yeah, the US voted against a ban on the Death Penalty, adding in the "on homosexuals" to make it sound worse doesn't really help your position at all. "The United States unequivocally condemns the application of the death penalty for conduct such as homosexuality, blasphemy, adultery, and apostasy," Nauert said. "We do not consider such conduct appropriate for criminalization." Can we please have discussions where one side isn't blatantly misrepresenting the truth again.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
where did my formatting go, fuck it here it is again:
Yeah, the US voted against a ban on the Death Penalty, adding in the "on homosexuals" to make it sound worse doesn't really help your position at all.
"The United States unequivocally condemns the application of the death penalty for conduct such as homosexuality, blasphemy, adultery, and apostasy," Nauert said. "We do not consider such conduct appropriate for criminalization."
Can we please have discussions where one side isn't blatantly misrepresenting the truth again.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Sure, just take a random comment on face value without checking it's veracity.
Well done idiot
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
That is a good argument you can make with your elected representatives. You can write to them about what copyright laws would most effectively promote progress of the Arts and sciences. You can tell them that if they vote for stronger copyright, you'll volunteer as part of their opponent's campaign.
It is not the province of the courts to decide which laws are effective, but how they should be worried in order to be most effective. The court, made up of judges appointed for life who will never answer to voters, has ruled that its own power is limited to the question of if Congress could think that the laws they wrote might further the objectives listed in the Constitution.
You may say you (and a thousand like-minded individuals) have little influence with a Congressman who will soon be up for re-election. To whatever extent that's true, you have even less influence with a federal judge appointed for life, so we probably don't want federal judges deciding which laws are best and most effective, only intervening if the Congressman (who will be facing re-election next year) CLEARLY passed a law with no possible connection to the purposes allowed by the Constitution.
Actually it can be stolen. If the somebody in your patent example can convince a court that they actually owned the patent and not you, they will have successfully stolen it because you will no longer be allowed to make it without their permission. This is why using the word "steal" in these contexts is a problem. "Steal" does have a meaning that is far worse. Selling unauthorized copies of a book is totally different from stealing the rights to sell a book (and prevent the original author from doing so).
Judge sez: In USSA, only academic nomenklaturists are allowed to have scientific knowledge. Proles must remain ignorant - it's DUH LAW!
... actually, no. Not at all.
It's interesting, it _sounds_ like the ACS is representing beleaguered authors of papers fighting to get their share of profits ($4.8 million in damages). The name includes 'Society' which makes it sound like a professional organization of chemists. But it isn't.
It's reasonable to assume that those authors are getting much wider distribution because their (in some cases) publicly funded work isn't hidden behind a pay wall. And that's why they try to get published.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
"The resolution doesn’t call for the end to capital punishment altogether", right there in the article. "but asks member nations not to use it in a “discriminatory manner”—including against against minors and pregnant women" I assume the real issue was in here. Most likely the part about minors, the US does prosecute children as adults.
Yeah, the US voted against a ban on the Death Penalty, adding in the "on homosexuals" to make it sound worse doesn't really help your position at all.
Are you sure we're reading the same thing?
AC is modded down, but he's absolutely right. He didn't die in some sort of heroic sacrifice. He died because he paniced and was scared of being put on trial. I know we have a lot of cowards here who will happily mod us down for saying so, because really that's all they have the power to do, but he wasn't killed tied to a fence, or lynched, or tortured to death in prison. He chose suicide, the coward's way out.
Came back to point out that some of the commenters appear to be right, the full text of the ban makes it difficult for the US to vote for ot without admitting they shouldn't have a death penalty at all. My source neglected to mention that! My bad.
That said, for the record I think the death penalty is unjustifiable anyway.
snake
Aaron Swartz may not have had to die. But unfortunately Bassel Khartabil was executed.